


Yield

by natsubaki



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Difficult Decisions, Love, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Reunions, Separations, Tokyo Ghoul: re, Tsukikane Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 08:39:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5578831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natsubaki/pseuds/natsubaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This time, Kaneki chooses himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yield

**Author's Note:**

> Written for tumblr's Tsukikane Week - Day Six: Family / re:awaken.

“I know this man,” Sasaki says to the specter within his mind. His grip is tight on the quinque poised above the man’s throat, thighs pinning the man immobile beneath him. Sasaki can feel each labored breath as the man’s chest rises and falls with stuttering difficulty, can feel his body pulse as blood rapidly pumps throughout. His kagune has already dissipated into a mist of Rc cells, and there’s an emptiness in his eyes, as though this were the conclusion he’d been long waiting for.

He is ready to die.

Sasaki cannot allow it.

The child is watching. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

 _I did. You weren’t listening_ , comes the reply. It’s direct. Non-judgmental. He swings his feet. _Hey, you’ve got some company._

It’s the last thing Sasaki remembers before the scent of his own blood fills his nose and he is blinded by a severing pain.

  


As one part emerges, the other starts to fade away. He’s enveloped by darkness. Kaneki rises to the surface, air in his lungs such a foreign and forgotten thing. His eyes open; he floats in a sea of black surrounded by white fog. Calm waves lap over him, a tiny buoy under a checkerboard sky lit by a bright full moon.

 _You’re needed out there_ , a tiny voice calls out to him. Kaneki looks up. Rights himself. He begins to swim. The black water splashes around him, soundless. His limbs feel incredibly light. His mind feels empty, like it’s leaking out from behind.

A child stands upon the shore. He’s like a mirage: covered by a translucent clustering of rose-colored bubbles that drifts off and disappears into the void. A large gray mound lies on the ground next to the child. It’s contorted, and Kaneki can smell its putrid stink from where he swims. He knows what it is, senses its offering. His stomach growls, empty and wanting.

Kaneki drags himself out of the water, the weightlessness replaced by unfamiliar heaviness as he steps onto the monochrome shore. His chest burns. His eyes sting. He reaches out.

The child smiles as Kaneki’s hand goes through him. He scatters, and as the bubbles separate and surround Kaneki, he feels like his mind is stitching up. It’s far worse than the leaking.

 _Remember what I said_.

  


Now that Kaneki has found him, Tsukiyama can’t die yet. But he had taken too much time eating, and his stomach bottoms out as a familiar tempo of footsteps approaches. He’s too weakened to fight a fourth time. There is no escaping this. They cannot die here.

_Choose! Choose!_

“Special Class Ui,” Kaneki acknowledges, descending. Blinks his kakugan away.

“Wipe that blood from your face,” Ui nearly spits. It’s an inane request—there’s blood all over him. His own, his opponents’...the back of his head is encrusted with it. But Kaneki reaches up and brushes the back of his hand against his mouth, erasing the obvious evidence of his ghoul nature.

Loud clacking follows Ui as he turns. He grasps his quinque so strongly that his hand trembles. “We’ve got a job to finish.”

He needs to think fast. His brain feels like it’s out of tune, a channel overrun by static. “I engaged the target as soon as I arrived on the rooftop,” Kaneki says, a hollowness burrowing inside his rib cage, “but the Owl interfered during our battle. Like our investigation indicated, it really does seem as though the Tsukiyama family and Aogiri Tree are linked.”

Lies, but they will do. The CCG cannot know _their_ connection. He has to get Tsukiyama out of this alive.

_—don’t kill him don’t kill him don’t kill him don’t kill him—_

He looks down. Tsukiyama is crumpled against one of the faces of the building. Blood splotches pattern his suit and face. His eyes roll slowly up to Kaneki. He’s as beautiful as Kaneki remembers him. He looks dead inside. Kaneki knows the feeling. When he hears _his_ name called, weak and thin and longing _—_ pleading _—_ it’s a far worse blow than any he had suffered that night.

It’s a gamble, but...he has to make it believable. He wonders if he’ll ever be forgiven.

_Choose!_

In another life, there were times where he had been presented a choice. But Kaneki could never do it. How could he value one thing over another, when they were equally as precious? And he’d never chosen himself, ever. His mother had taught him that.

This time, Kaneki chooses himself. What _he_ wants.

His back stretches and ripples, skin bursting as his kagune slithers out. It feels different. Like a parasite has invaded, weaving its spiny and grasping fingers throughout his kakuhou, infesting him. Awaiting a gruesome birth.

He lashes out with a tentacle, skewering Tsukiyama before Ui can get to him. “Special Class Ui,” he says, slinging the ghoul’s limp body out and over the edge, “I’ll exterminate him.” The look that Tsukiyama gives him as he desperately clutches onto Kaneki’s kagune, dangling mid-air and coughing up blood, could end him. But he has to convince the special class investigator. If this doesn’t work, neither of them have a chance.

“Go ahead. I’ll take care of this one.”

Kaneki looks behind him, at the ghoul who seemed fixated on Tsukiyama. Tsukiyama had called him Kanae. Kanae stares back at him from the floor, seething. Kaneki pauses. Really looks. Tsukiyama’s name bubbles from Kanae’s dying lips. There’s a moment of understanding. A pact sealed by sacrifice.

_—don’t kill him—_

What needs to be done.

_“It will be okay.”_

He whips his kagune away, dislodging Tsukiyama and sending him plummeting toward the ground. Kanae darts out of Ui’s path and rushes past Kaneki, falling together after his master. The loud crack of a quinque meeting cement resounds through the air.

Only one will survive this. As their figures retreat into the darkness, Kaneki cannot bear to watch. He knows that Tsukiyama will make it out alive; they had chosen together. There had only ever been one option. He just has to trust that Tsukiyama will find him again, as he’d always done. That one day, he would understand.

This was not a betrayal. There had been a choice to make.

Kaneki remembers another lonely night, another rooftop. A first separation. How he’d made the wrong choice, all those years ago. How it had led to this. There’s so much he’s done wrong; so much he wishes he could redo. Things he needs to atone for. But there is still work he must accomplish. This is the only way he knows.

He still yearns to be loved.

And now, there’s someone out there who may still love him. He exists, and perhaps that love is so strong that it has turned to hate. The line between the two is almost indistinguishable. Perhaps one day, that hate will circle back to love, and Kaneki can draw his final breath, fulfilled.

 _“I’ll always be by your side.”_ It was a pledge made inside a small bedroom, accompanied by a gift of books and reassuring words.

Kaneki is counting on it—that Tsukiyama will find his way to his side again and remain there until the very end. Even if that end would be brought about Tsukiyama himself. In that case, then all the better. To die, loved, by the hand of the one who loves him and whom he loves in return.

Everything will be okay.


End file.
